The president's proposal to renew current insurance policies has put state regulators in a tough spot.

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"Insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014 and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll into the same kind of plan," President Barack Obama said.

But a simple rollback may not be easy in Maryland. The Maryland General Assembly had cleared the way for the state health benefits exchange, and insurance rates for 2014 are the product of public hearings.

No one, not the Governor's Office, the state Attorney General's Office nor State House presiding officers know whether or not it would take an act of the General Assembly to reverse course even just for a year.

Plus, does changing the rates require another round of public hearings? And will that destabilize the marketplace and drive rates up? State law requires new plans to meet the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Krag Sichelstiel is one of the more than 73,000 Maryland residents who got a health care insurance cancellation notice.

"I liked the policy, I shopped it got accepted and now here I am without insurance," Sichelstiel said.

Insurers 11 News contacted said it's unclear whether state laws will preclude them from doing what the president has proposed. Maryland Insurance Commissioner Therese Goldsmith said she will be meeting with insurance carriers before deciding how to act.

Sichelstiel said he hopes that doesn't take long. He has had trouble navigating the state's health insurance web portal.

"The screen kept freezing so I gave up on it and started to hear more and more stories about how no one was able to get on. So here I am wondering what I'm going to do. Once my deadline comes Jan. 1, I will probably be uninsured," Sichelstiel said.

The president's proposal gives insurance companies federal permission to renew policies that would otherwise be canceled but it does not require them to renew.

Companies would still need the permission of state insurance regulators to act. The Maryland insurance commissioner has spent the past two days huddling with staff to figure out what to do next.